Before he wrote screenplays like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All The President’s Men, The Princess Bride, and Marathon Man, William Goldman was a young cinephile sneaking into the Halcyon Theatre in the northern Chicago suburbs. His early 1980s memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade (punned from an unfinished Dylan Thomas novel) is a crafty tracking shot of how decades of Hollywood life turn innocence into knowledge. This is what a smart Hollywood dinner table sounds like. And we know who is sitting at that table.
Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.